In the lead-up to President Donald Trump’s Saturday night rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, it’s been revealed that half a dozen staffers who were on-site and apparently assisting with set-up have tested positive for the Coronavirus. Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh says that “quarantine procedures” were immediately initiated, and apparently, neither any of the infected staffers nor any one who had close contact with them will be attending the Saturday night rally. Nevertheless, the revelation of six new Coronavirus cases among the Trump campaign’s staff underlines the danger of the rally. Thousands of people could be exposed to the Coronavirus at once if it’s present in just a few people and gets going through the crowd.
The Associated Press reports:
‘Murtaugh said campaign staff members are tested for COVID-19 as part of the campaign’s safety protocols. Campaign officials say everyone who is attending the rally will be given temperature checks before they pass through security. They will also be given masks to wear, if they want, and hand sanitizer at the 19,000-seat BOK Center. The rally was expected to be the largest indoor gathering in the world during the pandemic.’
Large public gatherings have mostly been indefinitely postponed amidst concerns about the spread of the virus. Gatherings like the Trump rally in Tulsa on Saturday night could result in deaths if the virus is present, and as other instances of people living and working in close quarters have revealed, the virus can spread fast among large groups. The Tulsa area is already facing a recent spike in cases, and the director of the local health department said that they wished Trump’s rally would be postponed, but the president and his allies do not seem to care.
Trump has frequently claimed that Democrats have tried to hype up the dangers of the Coronavirus just to make him look bad, which is a nonsense claim. Around the world, Coronavirus deaths currently stand at a total of over 460,000. It takes a special kind of delusional self-obsession for Trump to claim that concern about the virus constitutes some kind of plot to make him look bad.
